We’ve already had one Hellboy discussion, but we haven’t had a review.
Cast, Crew, and Other Info:
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Writers: Guillermo del Toro, Mike Mignola
Hellboy: Ron Perlman
Prof. Trevor Bloom: John Hurt
Liz Sherman: Selma Blair
John Myers: John Myers
Rasputin: Karel Roden
Tom Manning: Jeffrey Tambor
Kroenan: Ladislav Beran
Clay:Corey Johnson
Ilse: Biddy (Bridget) Hodson
Young Broom: Keven Trainor
Abraham Sapien: Doug Jones
Premise: A Nazi occult experiment brings a demon-child to earth. A kindly American scientist raises him to be a hero, who must prevent the apocolypse.
High Points : Any of the conflicts with Kroenan; he’s a prop rather than a character, but they use him well, and he exerts a morbid fascination.
Perlman’s quiet moments as Hellboy often work.
Low Points: Ilse basically comes across as a Nazi bimbo, and she does little that’s interesting or important. She has no character, just a series of poses and outfits. She would be tolerable as eye-candy, except she’s clearly supposed to be Ilse Koch (also Ilsa Koch), the warped wife of Buchenwald commandent Karl Koch. If you’re going to use Ilse, justify it. Roden’s Rasputin isn’t much like the historical figure, but at least using him as a sorcerer makes some kind of sense. Ilse’s use is gratuitous.
Also: the need to have a voiceover hammer us over the head with an already-obvious moral at the conclusion.
The Scores:
Originality: 3/6. The material works fairly well, but it’s highly derivative, the usual comic/gaming/fantasy mix of historical occult nonsense, Christian lore, Lovecraft, and pulp fiction and comic-book conventions. In short, this is Buffy or Angel with a really big budget.
Effects: 5/6 Excellent overall: especially the work on Abe and Kroenan. Some of the monster graphic work could have been a little better, but no one outside of The Lord of the Rings ever gets this as good as it could be.
Story: 4/6: Oh no! Someone’s planning the apocalypse! The main story’s not terribly original or interesting, but it propels the action along nicely. What intrigued me more were the multiple backstories at which the film hints: Abe’s mysterious origins, the Vatican statue, and so forth. Fans of this sort of thing will take these in stride, and even relish them. Others may be left confused, but it shouldn’t affect their overall enjoyment.
Acting: 4/6. Perlman makes Hellboy a sensitive and interesting figure, while Abe has a memorably quirky personality. Neither of these are deep, but they are appealing. The rest of the cast rarely gets more than one dimension. Myers has barely any characteristics at all.
Production: 6/6 Production values are high. Hell, boy, they had so much cash behind this film, they could afford to waste it on completely gratuitous sets and unnecessary effects.
Emotional Response: 3/6 Blunted. I couldn’t take Liz’s pain seriously because the movie never develops Liz as a person. Meanwhile, we’re invited to ignore the pain of large groups of people; the immolation of the psychiatric ward plays as a gratuitous effect. I did feel for Hellboy, however, and the film does deliver fun suspense effectively.
Overall: 4/6. If you’re looking for a fun comic-book movie, this works. If you seek some depth in your fantasy, this may not be the film for you.
Hellboy receives a final score of 29/42
Re: Ilse and other things
While I wouldn’t be surprised if Mignola’s character were based on a historical personage, ‘Ilse’ is more likely meant to be Ilsa Haupstein, a character Mignola mentioned briefly in “Seed of Destruction” and used more fully in “Wake the Devil”. Haupstein hasn’t displayed any of Koch’s predilections in the Hellboy stories, so I suspect the concept of Nazi bimbo might be closer to Mignola’s character than the bizarre fetishism of Koch.
Wasn’t much of a character in the original stories, either, but she really is terminally underused in the film (she’s in, what, four scenes?). I think they’d have been better off leaving her out, but they’d then have to make Kroenen at least a bit self-motivated (ironic that Kroenen is motivated by sheer willpower, but never really seems to do much of anything on his own initiative).
Anyway, nice review: fair and accurate, so I’ve got no complaints. The Hellboy stuff tends to be derivative of existing mythology and horror stories, but I think that’s a part of the pulp style that Mignola has adopted. And if it’s any consolation, those of us following the comics still don’t know what Abe’s back-story is. The original story is from 1994 — I came to this only in the last couple of years, but some folks have been getting strung along for a decade now :)
Re: Ilse and other things
The dangers of not knowing the source material, I suppose. Still, they certainly make her look like the Hollywood version of Ilse in those opening scenes (Frau Koch inspired three infamous exploitation flicks many years ago).
Re: Ilse and other things
She-Wolf of the SS?
you know your trash
She-Wolf of the SS?
Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS, loosely based on Ilse Koch’s life, was followed by Ilsa: Harem Keeper of the Oil Shieks, by all accounts fairly twisted fare having almost nothing to do with the historial Ilse. The third film, Ilsa, the Wicked Warden is apparently an unrelated women-in-prison movie with the same actress, retitled and sold in some markets as an “Ilsa” flick.
So, about Hellboy…?
Re: Ilse and other things
I’m just saying, is all. With maybe three exceptions (Myers, HB’s previous babysitter, and the various other expendable BPRD agents), all the characters were adapted from existing material, to varying degrees of success.
Anyway, good review. Would’ve been more useful to me than most of the ones I was able to find leading up to the release.
Re: Ilse and other things
Well, Ilsa did not seem an important character at all but she did help. She struck me as a simple henchwoman in love making her tiny contribution to the evil plan It was a one dimensional portrayal but one I didn’t mind overall.
plothole
What happened to those things left under the sewer? Do we just assume they rounded them all up and took them back to Russia? If so, why?
Re: plothole
I Was Thinking That. I Finally Came To The Conclusion: Catching And Dealing With Monsters Is Their Day-To-Day Work, So It’s Really Just Back To Business As Usual For The Bureau.
I hear you, but…
Everything Timeshredder said is pretty much bang on, but there’s a but.
It’s an enjoyable movie. I went. I watched it, I didn’t feel like my $9.00 + tax & gas were completely wasted.
All cinima can’t be supercalifragilisticexpalidocious, and this movie wasn’t, but for 2 hours, I enjoyed myself.